I’m going to begin this with my original question from before I rewrote this (and hope this post isn’t ignored): Why is black arrow being changed into a casted shot?

Right now on live, we have a very good choice of variety when it comes to hunter specs:

1. Beast mastery- synergy between both the player and the pet2. Marksmanship- the weapons based damage spec3. Survival- the mobile spec

On beta, we aren’t feeling this with the current survival spec. Survival spec- since Wrath- has always been a juggling act- but it was fun for a lot of people. With Cata, we have to make sure out sting was on the target, that black arrow was on the target, ensure we are doing our Lock and Load procs without clipping. All the while using cobra shot in between all of this to ensure we had the focus for our next shot.

Survival dps wasn’t completely dependent on our pets and it wasn't AS clucky as marksmanship- it was the fun spec. At certain points, it was as good and sometimes better than the flavor of the month spec of MM. Those of us that didn’t like the play style of MM stayed SV because- let’s face it- since the nerfs at the beginning of Wrath BM’s rep has never truly recovered.

As with every expansion, things change, sometimes the changes are good, sometimes the changes are just downright horrible. I have to be honest, the current beta survival changes are just downright horrible.

About 5-7 months ago, one of the Q&A questions for hunters: what do you not like about your class? One of our most major issues was having to use a casted shot to regen our focus bar. While having a mechanic to regen our focus bar isn’t the big issue, having to use a casted for it is. We were told before the implementation of focus, that mana made the class feel too mage-like, thus they were moving away from it. Yet, here we are, about 2 years after that comment making the class feel more mage-like.

The casted black arrow is a bad change.

For starters, it has an AoE ability tacked onto it. Now, unless you plan on making the Yor’sahj model of fight a constant thing (adds right next to the boss), the AoE component makes no sense. When I target change for AoE, that means the mobs have to get down as quickly as possible. A casted AoE doesn’t help with the “as quickly as possible” thing. Also, AoE has a tendency to break CC; making the healer and the tanks job more of a hassle.

There is no cool down. The only cool down we have for black arrow is on the target. I know we can obviously set up a power aura to keep track of this, but there are still people (whether new or old players) that don’t use addons. At least with the shot itself having a cool down, we had a way of knowing when to cast it on the target again.

Aspect of the Fox: the current black arrow model is in no way attached to fox, which means we aren’t able to cast it on the go (since we have tank that like to move- a lot). Which means on movement fights, I can’t use it.

My suggestion is giving Black arrow a glyph: "Glyph of Black Arrow: makes your black arrow a single target shot with an 8 second cooldown. No longer does AOE damage and half the weapons damage. In addition, your multishot now applies serpent sting on each target (up to 5 targets) for X amount of seconds- giving 1 point of focus per target."

Not only would this detract from the other two specs to use it, it would give us a play style choice. It would also give SV a reason to use multishot. SV is currently the only spec that has no reason to use multi.

On to the cost of shots: without efficiency, the shot costs are still too much. A proposed change would be:1. Serpent sting- 20 focus/returns 5 focus on the initial shot/3 focus for each tick2. Explosive shot: 45 focus3. Black arrow: 40 focus

This would allow us to get out our initial “rotation”. Right now, the lack of focus in the initial rotation is hurting us as is the new casted time of BA.

If I wanted to play a mage or MM, I'd play a mage or MM.

As you can see by how highly this got rated on top of the many comments this subject has, there are a lot of people that agree with me on this.

That does bring up a good question. Mainly regarding Serpent Spread. It appears that Black Arrow with the cast time, direct damage, and AoE components all added replaced Serpent Spread (was removed entirely.) With the revert in Black Arrow's design, will we see Serpent Spread return or will Black Arrow retain its AoE damage and direct damage but be instant cast?